


Follow the Trail

by Deannie



Series: Young Mister Ryan and His Undercover Cousin [5]
Category: Castle, The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Cousins, Gen, Pre-ATF, pre-12th precinct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:24:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5984245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The agent’s blunt statement was absurd enough that Kevin laughed involuntarily. “Ezra? Are you serious?” He shook his head at their stony faces. “I still don’t know who Eric Stabler is, but Ezra wouldn’t steal—especially not from his own investigation.” His stomach dropped suddenly as he replayed Young’s words: <i>your cousin made off…</i> </p>
<p>“Where is Ezra?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow the Trail

**Author's Note:**

> Follows along after _Padding the Nest_. Read that first. :)

Ezra Standish had a poker face that had held up to some of the best players in the world. His ability to project calm had saved his life numerous times in the past, when he’d faced down drug dealers and arms dealers and dealers of things no one should ever buy or sell. Hiding his emotions was his stock in trade.

But Ezra was also a trained professional, his psychology degree much more than decorative. The two Internal Affairs agents sitting across the table from him were looking for a guilty man. A man who would try _so hard_ to remain cool and calm and in control, so as to prove his innocence. That cold demeanor would, of course, scream guilty to them.

So Ezra did what he did best. He read the situation and adapted accordingly. He’d been annoyed, though hardly shocked, when he was taken off desk duty and told to report to IA. Fallon had let too many people live who knew how much money had been in that briefcase, and Ezra was unsurprised that suspicion naturally landed on him. Now, sitting in the interrogation room, his left arm still strapped to his chest, his back tender and aching, he let them see that he was tired and sore and miserable. A calculated vision of the truth was more beneficial in this instance than his usual blithe unconcern. He hoped.

Seemingly unmoved, the younger of the two agents, a Korean man named Gary Lee, slid a photo of Eric Stabler across the table at him. Ezra was again startled by just how much Stabler resembled him.

“Let’s go over this again, Agent Standish. Tell us what you know about Eric Stabler.”

Ezra allowed himself to be impatient. “It’s all in the notebook I sent Agent Marks before the bust,” he said, repeating himself for their benefit and his own. “He came up from New Orleans, Hanlon took a shine to him, I wanted to make sure that my place as his second in command was secure.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I had been working undercover for more than six months at the time—I’d worked damn hard to get where I was!”

“And where was that, exactly?” Tracy Hickman, a hard-looking white woman in her mid-forties, leaned forward at him in a classically threatening manner. Just in case he wasn’t aware that this was an interrogation, not a debrief.

“Right next to Michael Hanlon, so that I could bring him and his whole operation down,” he sighed, not biting back a groan as he shifted his injured side in the uncomfortable chair. “I needed to make sure he trusted me.”

Lee nodded. “Seems he was the only one who did. His own man shot you in the back after all.”

Ezra clamped down on the desire to address the misconception. Right now, pointing his finger at Fallon would do more harm than good, given what he hoped Will Macklin was uncovering for him. “I don’t know what Joey was thinking when that happened,” he said, deftly refusing to assign the deed to the drug dealer who’d been found guilty post mortem. “We can’t ask him now, can we?”

“No,” Hickman agreed. “But we did ask Stabler.” She looked at her own folder, clearly not reading it, and Ezra wanted to remind the both of them that they were interrogating a fellow agent, not some rube off the street. He knew every trick, every delaying tactic, every way to make a suspect sweat. Who did they think they were fooling?

“He insisted that the case Hanlon gave you had $180,000 in it.”

“I didn’t count it,” he lied, bleeding a touch of exasperation into his tone. “It wasn’t my job. I don’t know how _he_ knew how much there was, either. Mick wasn’t big on giving out information.”

“Hanlon. Another person we can’t ask, since he’s conveniently dead.” Lee seemed almost smug.

Ezra injected a smidge of fear. “I didn’t shoot either of them!”

The reply made Hickman blink, and Ezra took heart. “Look, Agent Standish, we’re just trying to get to the bottom of this,” she said, playing the good cop badly. “Stabler seemed to think you weren’t above skimming from Hanlon’s coffers. It’s bad business for an FBI agent to be accused of stealing evidence. It’s worse for him to be accused of killing a potential witness.”

_Killing…?_ “What do you mean?” he asked, the shock and worry in his tone genuine this time.

Lee put another photo in front of him, though the look on his face said he’d seen the fear and confusion Ezra wasn’t trying to hide. This photo was also of Eric Stabler—lying on a slab, very, very dead.

Ezra ran his right hand over his face. Things had just gotten much, much more complicated.

********

“Ryan!”

Kevin looked up from the search he was running on Emil Dovic’s known associates. The serious tone of voice went along with his captain’s pursed lips and the two men who stood beside him, their sharp black suits and flat expressions marking them as FBI, or something federal, anyway.

“Yes, sir?” he replied, standing and heading for Bricker’s office.

“This is Agents Garrety and Young from the FBI,” Captain Bricker said, a touch of annoyance in his tone now. “They’d like to have a word with you.”

_About what, I wonder?_ he thought, as he followed the three men into the office and his captain closed the door behind them. Kevin had made a thorough accounting of his time with the Irish mob to everyone in the alphabet soup—DEA, ATF, and yes, the FBI. And that was a month ago. What else was there to say?

Bricker sat at his desk, taking up the role of observer, while Kevin sat on one of the two couches in the corner, the agents sitting on the second one on the other side of the small coffee table. One white, one African-American, the two men were typically nondescript: dark hair cut neatly, faces forgettably ordinary… _Like Men in Black,_ he thought fancifully.

“Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, Officer Ryan.”

Young’s—or Garrety’s, because they’d been introduced as a single entity and might actual be one—bland and suspicious tone set his teeth on edge.

“Didn’t look like I had a lot of choice,” he said mildly. “What can I do for you?”

Young—he was going to call the young black guy Young—looked down at his notepad. “You were undercover with Danny Shannon’s gang on Staten Island from March of last year until this May, is that correct?”

He looked over at Bricker for a sign of… something… but got only a poker face in return. He cleared his throat nervously. “Yes.”

“And during that time, you were using the persona of one Fenton O’Connell?”

This was sounding more and more like an interrogation. “Yes. Look, that’s all in—”

Garrety sat forward. “You had occasion—numerous occasions—to contact an FBI agent named Ezra Standish, who was using a related persona during that same period.”

_What the hell…?_ “Yeah. Ezra’s my cousin. He called me when he began his operation so that there was no chance either of us would be compromised.”

“Compromised how, exactly?” Young asked. He was apparently playing the role of Bad Cop today.

Kevin tried to relax and explain—though these guys had to understand the logic, right? “Danny Shannon checked out every man who ever joined his crew. Once he bought the O’Connell family backstory, if Fenton didn’t even know his big brother had gotten out of jail, how was that going to look?”

“Were you aware of any details of Agent Standish’s operation?” Garrety asked.

“Only that he was working for a guy named Mick.” Kevin bristled at the implications in both agents’ eyes. “He knows better than to leak information and I know better than to ask.”

“And yet,” Garrety said, opening a file and removing a stapled set of pages to lay them on the table between them, “you seemed pretty free with _your_ information when the two of you spoke after Danny Shannon was arrested.”

Kevin picked up the transcript and recognized some of the conversation they’d had right after the Shannon bust. “You were bugging his phone?”

The non answer was an answer in itself. “During that phone call, he spoke to you about a drug dealer named Eric Stabler, is that correct? This was just days before the bust that killed Mick Hanlon.”

Kevin hadn’t know Hanlon was dead. In fact, he’d only talked to his cousin that once after Ezra’s operation was done, and didn’t know any more than that it had been successful. Suddenly the lack of communication since then seemed strange, even though he and Ezra could go months without speaking under normal circumstances.

The agents were staring, and he realized he hadn’t answered them. “Um, I guess. I mean, he mentioned Stabler and thought maybe he could use Fenton to undermine Stabler’s standing with Mick. That’s all he ever called him. Mick.”

“I see.” Garrety didn’t. Apparently this was a Two-Bad-Cops-No-Waiting kind of day. “And why did he think a low-level drug dealer from New York would have any pull?”

Kevin unaccountably bristled at that, and caught himself immediately when he realized that that was exactly what they wanted. He breathed easy and explained. “Mick was from the East Coast. Irish. The Shannons are well known all up and down this way and Mick knew me from discussions Ezra and I had had previously.”

“Did your cousin show any particular… enmity toward Eric Stabler?” Garrety asked.

“You have the tapes and the transcript. You tell me.” This was all sounding too damn wrong. Ezra was in trouble somehow. “That was the first and last time he ever mentioned him.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Look, if you could just tell me what’s going on—”

He was cut off mid-request. “Eric Stabler was murdered in a federal prison in Georgia three days ago, after claiming that your cousin made off with $80,000 from the Hanlon bust.”

Young’s blunt statement was absurd enough that Kevin laughed involuntarily. “Ezra? Are you serious?” He shook his head at their stony faces. “I still don’t know who Eric Stabler is, but Ezra wouldn’t steal—especially not from his own investigation. And he sure as hell wouldn’t kill a federal detainee.” His stomach dropped suddenly as he replayed Young’s words: _your cousin made off…_ “Where is Ezra?”

“Agent Standish is cooperating with our investigation at this time,” Young replied, sounding as if that was clearly just so that Ezra could undermine it later. Kevin really hoped that “cooperating” wasn’t a euphemism for under lock and key.

“He’s cooperating because he’s a good cop,” Kevin averred. “I’m telling you now, whatever’s going on, I can’t believe he’d have anything to do with murder. And he wouldn’t steal from a federal investigation.”

“Really?” Garrety said. He withdrew a photograph from the folder and laid it down. “Do you know this woman?”

Kevin’s Aunt Maude looked up at him from what appeared to be a candid in a hotel lobby, done up to the nines as always, her blue eyes flashing and white-blonde hair perfectly coiffed. He felt something tighten in his chest. This was bad. “That’s Maude Rosenbaum. Ezra’s mother.”

“Maude Rosenbaum, aka Maude Talesian, aka Maude Standish…” Young had a file of his own. “She’s well-known for leaving her husbands a good deal poorer than when she met them. Quite the grifter in her early days, too—sometimes with a teenage accomplice. You know what they say about apples falling from trees.”

He could see where this was going, and he had a sudden desire to put a fist through the wall. Maude could cause trouble for Ezra from a continent away, damn it. “Maude is a lot of things, I’ll grant you. And Ezra’s none of them.”

“Well, not now, maybe,” Garrety put in dubiously. “But he hasn’t always been what you’d call a law-abiding citizen, has he?”

The hell of it was, Kevin couldn’t actually counter that. “He has a past, sure, but he’s spent fifteen years making amends—and making collars other agents couldn’t.”

“I guess those lingering connections to the seamier side of life make that easy, don’t they?” Young replied sarcastically.

Kevin couldn’t stay seated anymore. “Now wait a minute! What proof do you have that Ezra took anything? The word of a drug dealer who was probably only trying to get a better deal?”

“Stabler was murdered in a federal lockup, Officer Ryan,” Garrety reminded him. “That requires a certain amount of access.”

“Which doesn’t mean _Ezra_ killed him.” Kevin blew out a breath in an attempt to hold his temper in check.

“No,” Garrety agreed. “No, Agent Standish has a very convenient alibi for the time of the murder. But as we said, there are those lingering connections. It’s not inconceivable he might’ve had one of those contacts contrive to get Stabler alone in the corridor where he was killed.”

“Yeah, it _is_ inconceivable, actually,” Kevin snapped back. He resisted the urge to pace. “Did you find anything between him and anyone who might’ve been able to get to Stabler?” He turned on Young. “And how exactly did a prisoner just happen to be in a convenient hallway all by himself?”

“Agent Standish is responsible for the incarceration of a number of the felons who are locked up there,” Young replied evenly. “As to Stabler’s whereabouts, we’re still looking for a connection.”

Kevin shook his head. “You’re not going to find one,” he stated unequivocally. “God, you guys are something. Why… Why would people Ezra put away be willing to risk killing someone for him—”

“$80,000 can buy a lot of loyalty, Officer Ryan.”

“I’m betting you haven’t found that, either, have you?” Kevin murmured. “I couldn’t even get a search warrant on this kind of evidence, let alone a conviction—is that really all it takes for you FBI guys to turn on one of your own?”

“Ryan, that’s enough,” Bricker said, the quiet command sufficient to stop Kevin in his tracks. The rest of the men in the room stared at him until he dropped down into his seat.

“Why are you talking to me, anyway?” he asked truculently.

“I see you’ve found yourself a nice apartment, Mr. Ryan,” Garrety said, seeming to change the subject. “Pretty good for a police officer’s salary?”

Kevin chuckled bitterly. “So now you think he gave _me_ the money?” he asked incredulously. “Sorry to break it to you, but I had paychecks coming in for fourteen months while I was undercover. I figured the back pay entitled me to a nice place for at least the length of one lease.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Check my financials if you want.”

“We have,” Young said.

Kevin raised his head to glare at him. “Seriously?”

It was as if he hadn’t even spoken. Young gestured to the outfit Kevin was wearing. “You and your cousin seem to share the same expensive tastes. That can get stressful, can’t it?”

Kevin examined himself. He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, but the leather jacket and designer shoes were items he’d saved up for—and even then, he’d had to get them clearance. He loved good clothes, but he’d never invested in them the way he knew Ezra did. “Do I need to dig up the receipts?”

“I’m just saying,” Young continued. “Sometimes it seems like an easy way out to just skim a little. Maybe pass some on to your family members in exchange for their help.”

“What, so now _I_ had Stabler killed?” Kevin snorted, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “That’d be a neat trick.”

“We’re not saying that,” Garrety replied. “We are, however, wondering exactly how much you knew about what was going on in Mick Hanlon’s gang. And how much Standish might have given you—”

“I don’t know how you do it in the FBI, but if you’re going to accuse one of _my_ men of something, I want some cold hard proof, or this interview is over.” Bricker’s voice could have frozen fire.

“Thank you, sir,” Kevin murmured, looking over to his captain’s chair to find the poker face gone and anger in its place. The concern and support calmed him and he tried to really look at the men before him. _“The angrier you get, the less you’ll see,”_ his mother told him years ago. It was certainly the case now. “You don’t have anything on him at all, do you?” he asked finally. “You’re just fishing to see if there’s something here to investigate.” Who was pulling the strings? Kevin wondered.

Young blinked, looking minutely uncertain for the first time. _Finally._ “The Atlanta Bureau is just trying to clear some things up. There are certain inconsistencies in his report and those of the agents on scene, as well as the interrogations of the surviving perps,” he explained. “Standish was out in the field with minimal supervision for ten months, Officer Ryan—”

“I was in the cold for fourteen, you don’t see _my_ captain—”

“and he was shot in the back by one of Hanlon’s own men, so—”

“ _What!?_ ” Kevin exclaimed angrily. “When did that happen?”

Both agents were taken aback by his outburst, but Kevin didn’t even care. “How badly was he hurt? I spoke to him after the operation was over, and he never said—”

“His cellphone records show he spoke to you briefly ten days after the bust,” Young told him, watching him carefully. “Did you talk about the case?”

“No!” Kevin grated angrily, putting his head in his hands. _How the hell had Ezra kept something like that from him?_ “We talked about… undercover work. Family stuff.” Clearly they hadn’t been tapping Ezra’s personal line, he thought thankfully. He looked up at them both. “What makes you think he’s into anything dirty at all?”

“Agent Standish is well known for immersing himself in his undercover personas, Officer Ryan,” Garrety said mildly. “Maybe too deeply sometimes. After the events of this case, the inconsistencies brought to our attention by the senior agent on the scene… We’re just investigating how deeply into Standish’s investigation Cormac O’Connell actually went.”

“As far as Ezra needed him to, to make the bust.” Kevin sat back and let go of his head. God, he was going to kill Ezra when he talked to him next time, for not letting him know he’d been hurt, not letting him know he was in trouble.... He remembered Ezra’s words to him about people who lived their lives undercover. _”We’re decidedly less savory than you.”_

Like Hell.

“We’re also wondering where a career FBI agent gets the money for so many of the finer things,” Garrety continued. “Armani suits, fine antiques, a Jaguar XJS.” He threw down another photo. “Could be this isn’t the first time he’s skimmed a little off the top.” Now that Kevin was paying attention, he could see the man was trying to get him to flinch.

He looked at the picture of the sleek black car—the bane and the joy of Ezra’s existence—and sighed dramatically. At least this, he could clear up. “You’re right, he couldn’t have the money for that.” Both men perked up so, _so_ subtly. “Much as he’ll kill me for saying this, you’re going to have to ask his mommy—or her current husband, more likely.” The agents glared at him as he grinned, unrepentant. “I can’t claim to know where Maude got the money for it, but I do know Ezra ran the VIN through the theft database on his birthday year before last, if you want some _actual_ evidence of something.” Kevin pegged them each with a calm, candid look, regaining his footing and mad as hell at their accusation. “I can’t help you, gentlemen, and you know that, so let’s stop wasting time.”

Young stood up and Garrety followed, acknowledging the truth of his words but imparting a finally bit of advice anyway. “It might be better if you don’t contact your cousin just now, Officer Ryan.”

Kevin was on his feet again, bristling with controlled anger. “You can’t stop me from contacting my own family, Agent,” he stated dangerously. “Especially when he’s done nothing wrong.”

“Let’s just say it might look like you’re aiding a suspect by providing him with information on what evidence we’ve obtained.”

“Given that that evidence is exactly nothing, I don’t think it matters much, do you?” Kevin shot back. He turned to Bricker. “Sir, can I get on with catching _real_ bad guys now?” The look in his eyes was a clear thank you for the support.

“It’s sure as hell a better use of your time,” Bricker said, rising and coming around his desk to stand in front of the agents, a deadly smile on his face. “I’ll just see these two gentlemen out.”

****

Kevin tried to focus on his work for the rest of the day, but his hand kept drifting back to his phone, itching to call Ezra and bitch him out properly. How the hell do you not tell someone you just got _shot_? And why wouldn’t he have warned Kevin he might be called in by the feds himself?

Probably Ezra hadn’t thought they’d bring Kevin into it at all. He was sure they’d only done it because he was the one person outside of Hanlon and his own handler that Ezra had been talking to during all this. That, and he looked like an easy mark: young, hungry cop, eager to please...

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself, staring at the clock and realizing he’d stayed almost an hour later than he’d meant to and had nothing at all to show for it.

He packed up and was headed out when Bricker appeared at the door of his office.

“You call your cousin?” the captain asked. He’d only ever spoken to Ezra over the phone, as they were finalizing the details of the undercover persona, but Kevin got the feeling Bricker had been taken in by Ezra’s style. Or maybe it was because Ezra was just as intent on keeping Kevin safe as Bricker was.

“No, sir,” he said with a sigh. “I just… I don’t want to bring anything more down on his head, you know?’ He clicked his tongue in frustration. “Why the hell didn’t he tell me what was going on?”

Bricker smirked. “He probably didn’t want to bring anything more down on your head, you know?” He gave Kevin a stern look. “Is what they said true?” he asked. Kevin tensed. “Did you spill information on the Shannon bust?”

Kevin thought back, coming up with the discussion early in the morning after the bust. He’d been shuttled back to the precinct, angry and unaccountably exhausted, feeling like he’d left the job half-done—and badly half-done at that. “I might have blown off a little steam, sir,” he admitted contritely. “It wasn’t much more than he’d find out on the evening news a few days later anyway.”

“Still, keeping your mouth shut is damn near a requirement for an undercover man—even with family,” Bricker said, no censure or malice in his tone. “You’re a good cop any way you slice it, kid,” he stated quietly. “When you make detective, you’ll need to decide whether that’s the kind of job requirement you’re looking for.”

Kevin nodded, still not sure it was. Fourteen months of Fenton O’Connell’s life still crawled under his skin...

Bricker flicked a hand toward the door. “Go home, Ryan. Get some sleep. Whatever’s happening in Atlanta, you can’t fix it from here, and I doubt your cousin would want you to try.”

Kevin sighed. That was so, so true. “Good night, sir,” he said, walking to the elevator.

But it didn’t mean he couldn’t make a few calls.

*****

“Macklin Security, how may I direct your call?” The operator’s voice was rich and just this side of phone sex.

“May I speak to Mr. Macklin, please?”

“Of course, may I ask who’s calling?” she asked professionally.

“Ezra Standish,” Ezra replied. “I’m an old friend.”

The professionalism dropped a notch. Old friends didn’t pay the bills. “I’ll see if Mr. Macklin is available.”

Ezra sat on the edge of his couch and listened to the hold music, wishing for the day when he’d finally get to lean back without pain. Administrative leave didn’t agree with him and he was on edge and angry—moreso now, given the interview with Lee and Hickman yesterday morning. God willing, they believed his very real shock and horror at Stabler’s death.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that Stabler had fingered him, though he was itching to know who the interviewing agent was there. If Fallon tried to control things at tightly as Ezra thought he did, it was likely one of his own guys.

And then they’d had Stabler killed to hide the evidence.

Good Lord, it was worse than being undercover with the mob! He needed Will to have found something.

“Hey Ezra!” Will came on the line with all the vim and vigor of a type-A CEO. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Did you need something?” Translation: _I have what you need, but is it safe to say it over this line?_

“No, just calling to say hello. Hear a friendly voice,” Ezra replied, sounding a little blue. He didn’t think the Bureau would be able to get a warrant to tap his personal line with the evidence they had, but he was so used to his undercover phone calls being recorded, he just assumed he wasn’t safe. Will would get the message.

“Let’s hook up next week,” Will said, sounding harried. “I have a moron here who desperately needs to be fired. Kid said he could handle encryptions, but...” _I found the trail. It was either big enough for your guys to follow, or I widened it to make it so._ “Never mind, you don’t care about that crap. Call me next week, okay? I’ll have all this dealt with then.” _Just let them follow the trail—it can’t lead back to either of us._

“Of course.” Ezra found himself suddenly too tired of the intrigue try to hide his own stress. He was used to this when he was undercover, but this was _his_ life being played with.

“You okay, kid?”

Ezra was warmed by the fact that Will picked up on that, too. He wished he could risk getting a burner phone so he could talk to his old friend plainly, but his natural paranoia and distrust had been amplified by the bullet in his back. He was under suspicion of both corruption _and_ murder now with no one to turn to…

“I will be, old friend,” he lied—expertly enough that he hoped Will believed him.

“Take care of yourself, Ezra, okay?”

Ezra flashed back to the day when he was twelve and his mother packed up and left Will and Denver behind, dragging him with her. The look on Will’s face then—sad and hopeful and caring—was probably there now as well.

“I always do, Will,” he replied, and disconnected the call before Mackley could say anything more.

******

“What do you need now, _primo_?” The sharp, accented bark made Kevin smile as he sat on his couch, a beer in one hand and his phone in the other.

If Kevin Ryan was the younger, lighter version of Ezra Standish, Jimmy Hernandez was the older, darker one. Jimmy’s Mexican father had given him most of his coloring, and years in the California sun had only added a layer of tan to it. But the long-time DEA agent had the soft green eyes of a Standish and a surprisingly fine-boned face for such a large man.

Jimmy was also a lot crankier than Ezra. Most of the time.

“Sorry, Jimmy. Did I take you away from a party or something?” Kevin asked innocently.

“Seriously, cuz,” Jimmy replied, a little less gruffly. “What do you need? I got a case here I’m trying to close and it’s kicking my ass.”

Kevin nodded in the darkness. “I’ll be quick. I think. Look… I think Ezra’s in trouble.”

“Hell, when isn’t Ezra in trouble, man?” The line went silent after the grumpy exclamation, when Kevin didn’t respond in kind. “What, you mean like, _real_ trouble?”

“I got a visit from what were probably FBI IA guys today, asking about Ezra’s last undercover stint.” He cleared his throat. “There’s a dead mob crawler and $80,000 missing.”

Jimmy whistled, impressed. “And they think Ezra’s involved? Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the case. He and I were working related covers, and I got the idea from discussions Ezra and I had while he was out in cold that the guy he was after was into pretty much everything. Mick Hanlon.”

Jimmy clicked his tongue and said nothing.

“Jimmy?”

“Shit, _primo_ … They took down Carlos Alvarez with that Hanlon bust. DEA Atlanta is still crowing about it.” He clicked his tongue again. “I can’t dig too much, you know? It’d do more harm than good.”

Kevin sighed. “I know. It’s why I didn’t call my contact at the Bureau here.”

“You got a contact at the Bureau now, _hombrecito_?” Jimmy teased. “You’re getting to be important out there, eh?”

“Shut up,” Kevin snapped back lamely. “Just… let me know what you find out, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Jimmy was quiet for a long moment. “You all right? Seriously, now? Mom’s been talking to Aunt Lil, and…”

“I know,” Kevin said tiredly. “She’s worried about me. I’m fine.”

“Thinking about jumping ship?” Jimmy asked. “We got all kinds of room for a good analyst and detective in the DEA, you know?”

_Was_ he thinking about it? The answer came to him surprisingly quickly. “Nah. I’m a cop, Jimmy. Don’t think I’ll ever be anything but.”

“More power to you then, _primo_ ,” Jimmy replied easily. “I’ll make a couple of calls tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

Kevin held the silent phone in his hand for a long moment before he placed it on his coffee table. He should call Ezra, IA be damned. His cousin had always said he had nothing in common with his team at the Bureau, and Kevin had gotten the idea he didn’t have much backup. He was twisting in the wind, probably.

But would calling him just make it worse?

He stood up and headed to the fridge to find something to eat. This was something he couldn’t fix. It pissed him off. And it made him think of Staten Island, which pissed him off even more. Another thing he couldn’t fix. Oh sure, he’d made a start—Danny Shannon was behind bars for the rest of his life, and so were most of his worst enforcers. Bobby S. was in charge of the family now, and he was a kinder, gentler sort of mob boss, all told.

But Bobby and his crew were still out there. He hadn’t finished the job he went there to do.

And then there were the innocents. Like Siobhan…

_“The more you think about this, the more it is going to burn you up inside, Kevin.”_ Ezra’s words came to him clearly. _“You did your job. You made a difference. You came home to your family. We both know not all people in our line of business get the trifecta.”_

Kevin sighed, trying for that acceptance that the department shrink kept telling him would come, eventually.

He wasn’t surprised, later that night, that sleep was a long time coming, too.

******

It was another three days before Agent Hickman called Ezra back in. This time, he was shown to a conference room, not an interrogation cell. The junior agent who escorted him asked if he’d like a coffee. This time, he had his poker face in place.

And so did Agent Hickman. She entered the room after a reasonable delay and sat across the large table from him. Her tone was polite, not quite apologetic.

“Agent Standish,” she said. “We would first like to let you know that you will need to be re-cleared by medical to return to work.”

“But I _may_ return to work?” he asked pointedly.

She cringed. “We’ve been looking into all aspects of the operation, Agent Standish. New evidence has come to light,” she admitted. “And, um… As difficult as I know all of this has been for you, I would like to… ask your help as we continue our investigation.”

Ezra would have leaned back if he could, but settled for a vindicated grin. “You found the person who really killed Eric Stabler,” he hazarded. He didn’t dare tip his hand about Fallon and the money, after all. And much as he hadn’t liked Stabler, no man deserved to lose his life like that.

“No, we’re exploring a number of possibilities there. But as to the money...” She straightened her shoulders. “Do you know Richard Fallon well?” she asked.

Ezra kept his poker face tightly in place. _Let the games begin…_

******

It had taken a couple of days for Jimmy to call back, and he hadn’t found out much. The FBI was keeping all eyes out of this mess, so all he really got was what Young and Garrety had already told Kevin themselves: Stabler had been shanked while in custody and $80,000 was supposedly missing. Both incidents were under investigation, but Jimmy’s sources wouldn’t even admit to whether or not Ezra was a suspect.

“I know how you are, Kevin,” Jimmy counseled him quietly. “Don’t get into this, okay? Bureau Internal Affairs is not to be fucked with.”

He knew that. He did. But the fact that he couldn’t support his cousin in all this—or even find out what the hell was going on—ate at him. A week went by and Emil Dovic was arrested and charged, partially on the evidence that Kevin’s cyber-sleuthing had uncovered. If he could have done the same for Ezra, he would have, but instead, he waited for someone to tell him _something_.

Ten days after Kevin’s meeting with the FBI, Bricker called him into his office and closed the door.

“How are you doing, Ryan?” Bricker asked, giving him that penetrating look of his.

“I’m fine, sir,” he allowed.

“Heard anything more about your cousin?”

“No, sir.” Kevin leaned forward, half in dread, half in anticipation. “If you—”

“Sorry, kid,” Bricker broke in, raising his hands. “Didn’t mean to give you the idea I had anything, either. You’ve just been preoccupied.”

“I know, sir,” Kevin admitted, deflating. “And I’m sorry—”

“But not _too_ preoccupied, obviously,” Bricker interrupted again, this time with a smile. “You did a great job on the Dovic case. DA tells me they’re confident of a conviction, thanks in part to the paper trail you dug up.”

Kevin smiled slightly. That had actually been fun. Like piecing together the clues of the murder case against Danny Shannon. He looked up to see Bricker watching him carefully.

“Was there something else, sir?” he asked, fidgeting despite himself. It was like being called before the headmaster.

“You’re still seeing the department psychiatrist.” It wasn’t a question. “That going all right?”

_What the hell…?_ “The offer is there for a reason, right, sir?” he asked, perplexed. “I mean, it isn’t affecting my ability to do my job—”

“Ease up, Ryan,” Bricker said quickly. “You need someone to talk to, you talk to them. I just want to make sure it’s working for you.”

Kevin nodded, nervous all over again. “It is. Thank you, sir.” He took a deep breath and bit the bullet. “Sir, If I’ve done something wrong here—”

“I’ve told you before, Ryan, you’re a good cop. A solid researcher, good in the field...” He placed his hand on a folder before him. “More than that, though, you have the drive to make sure justice is served, to follow up on the leads no matter how long it takes. And you’re not stupid to enough try to deal with things on your own if you don’t have to. I’m proud of you.” He slid the folder across the desk. “It’s about time the department showed it is, too.”

Kevin reached out to take the file folder and opened it to find a single sheet of paper. Curious, he read the first few lines.

>   
>  _Dear Officer Ryan,_
> 
> _In recognition of your outstanding service to the New York City Police Department, we would like to extend a promotion to Detective, Junior Grade…._

He looked up at Bricker in shock. “Is this for real?”

Bricker grinned back at him. “Looks like maybe you’ll get to keep the apartment, huh?”

Yeah. And… and be a _detective_. Hell, the money didn’t even mean that much—how much did he really need until he met someone and settled down, right? But he hadn’t lied to his cousin Jimmy. He was in for life, here. It was nice to know he was going somewhere with it.

“Um…” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Thank you, sir. I…” He grinned, at a loss for words.

“I have a place ready for you here, Ryan, and I’m not going to lie—I want you to stay.” There was a long pause and Kevin tore his eyes away from the paper and looked into his captain’s very serious face. “But there are openings in other divisions. Maybe… better divisions for you.” He raised a hand as Kevin’s face fell. “Not for _us_ , not for Narco. Hell, even without the miracle you pulled off on Staten Island, we’re lucky to have you. But for _you_ , you understand?”

Kevin nodded. He did. After all, wasn’t that all he’d been thinking about since he came back from Staten Island—since he _left_ for Staten Island, if he was totally truthful.

He snorted, still not quite believing the words on the page in front of him.

“You have some time to decide, obviously,” Bricker said, moving to the door and opening it. Kevin rose, sensing the dismissal. The captain stopped him at the threshold and nodded significantly to Detective Parsons. Tim Parsons was the first guy here to see something in Kevin beyond a rookie’s uniform, and Kevin willed himself not to tear up as Tim stood with a smile and announced the good news in the usual way.

“Everybody shut up, now!” Tim yelled, nodding as the room went silent. “I want to introduce you to our newest Junior. May I present Detective Kevin Ryan!”

Kevin didn’t even care when a few tears snuck out anyway, as he listened to applause that was, shockingly, all for him.

*******

It was probably a good thing that he wasn’t still living at his parents’ house, Kevin mused as he tried to figure out the lock on his front door. And that tomorrow was Saturday. And that the couch was big enough to fall on top of, which he did without cracking his skull on his coffee table thank you very much.

He was drunk, and for once in recent history, it was a happy drunk. Not because he was missing Siobhan. Not because he’d left things undone on Staten Island. Not because… His eyes drifted closed and his mind drifted with them. Not because… Whatever.

Kevin smiled a shit-eating grin no one saw. He was a detective. Detective Junior Grade Kevin Michael Ryan. Well, not yet. There was paperwork and a new badge and… But….

********

Ezra eased back on his couch, allowing his shoulder blade to connect with the supple white leather for the first time since he’d come home from being Cormac O’Connell. He’d spent the night in Wetumpka, and the poker tables had been kind. Not that he’d be spending his ill-gotten gains any time soon, of course. No need to fan the flames of suspicion.

Rick Fallon had gone down fighting. He’d tried to finger Ezra again, claiming that Standish’s “questionable past” gave him a way to plant evidence of the $80,000 that had slid through his ex-wife’s checking account, into a blind fund in New Jersey, and from there to a numbered account in the Caymans. When faced with transfers that coincided with a dozen other busts Standish couldn’t possibly have been privy to, Internal Affairs hadn’t been impressed. Neither had Ezra—seriously, who routed money through American accounts before moving it offshore?

Apparently, Richard Fallon.

“I barely had to do a thing, Ezra,” Will told him, disgusted with the dirty agent’s ineptitude. Ezra had finally bought that new phone after Fallon’s arraignment yesterday and Will’s number had been the first one he dialed. The wire transfers had been legitimate and all Mackley had had to do was leave a trail from the blind fund back to Fallon. “He’d’ve hung himself long ago if anyone had bothered to look.”

Unfortunately, they couldn’t pin Eric Stabler’s death on Fallon, too. It was looking more and more like that was a case of mob karma. Johnny Smith had a couple of friends in the facility where Stabler died. The Department of Corrections was looking into it.

All in all, it was very much no longer Ezra Standish’s problem.

_Except that suspicions, once raised, can never quite be erased, can they?_ he thought bitterly. Not fully, anyway.

His own team wasn’t a problem for now. Pontiere had made it clear that if Internal Affairs was done with him and had left him his creds and his guns, he was a clean FBI agent and needed to do his fucking job. Marks was too lazy to be suspicious, and didn’t care about much beyond his own duties anyway. The two new active agents, though? Rauner and Caprizi were transplants and didn’t seem to know Fallon or any of his cronies, but it didn’t stop the two of them from giving him looks, from wondering whether the rumors they’d heard about their new colleague were true or not, but they at least didn’t refuse to work with him as he returned to desk duty and started working analysis on their current cases.

He wondered if that would change once he was cleared to be back in the field again. If they wouldn’t trust him to back them up, it didn’t really matter how well he did his job, did it? He could be finished in the Bureau, even after being cleared of all _official_ allegations of misconduct…

Maybe he should consider a change of venue—though to where, God only knew.

The sun was coming up, shining a gentle glow through the shutters on his windows. He’d soldier on until he couldn’t any more. It was what he did, after all, right?

He rose, intending to head for the shower, and withdrew his phone from his jacket pocket. The battery had died on him on the drive up from Alabama and he stopped by the office desk to plug it in beside his old phone. He frowned at a message on that old phone’s lock screen from his Aunt Lil, his face clearing as he read it.

`Call Kevin. Good news, I promise.`

He glanced at the clock and saw it was only 6:30. He put the phone down and headed for the shower as planned.

Good news could always wait a little longer.

********

Something was making a loud noise. It stopped and it started and it stopped and it started. Kevin ignored it until it went away… There might have been other noises, but he didn’t care.

 

And then the world was really bright. Had it been this bright a minute ago, when the noise was there? Kevin didn’t think so.

So maybe that wasn’t a minute ago?

His addled brain took a long moment to figure out that he was conscious and it was morning. He was sprawled on his couch and his head hurt enough that he hoped he hadn’t driven himself home. Or said anything too embarrassing. He was a detective, after all, he thought, chuckling for a second before the sound of it made him queasy, he had appearances to keep up.

The time on the cable box display said 11:30, but that couldn’t be right, so he ignored it and stumbled to the bathroom to start the shower going, letting it warm up while he took care of overdue business. God, how much had he drunk last night?

The weird intermittent sound that had woken him briefly, hours ago, didn’t cross his mind again until forty minutes later, when he was crouched like a gargoyle over the coffee machine, waiting for caffeine. It was probably his phone. He looked despairingly at the couch which was really, really far away. The coffeemaker finally started dripping black heaven into the carafe and he sighed. He should go over there and get the damn phone.

He had called his parents and sisters as soon as the clapping stopped yesterday, before he’d been swept away to the celebration at O’Malley’s. He was expected at the house at 4:00 for a celebration of a more family-oriented nature. He should probably get his shit together before then...

Kevin shuffled to the couch and gingerly bent over to retrieve his phone. It took a second for him to process the more than a dozen texts and missed calls. His mom had been talking. Aunt Jen, Uncle Hugh, a few cousins, a few _more_ cousins... One voicemail number stood out, because it wasn’t a number he recognized. But the area code was 404. Atlanta…

Hoping it was what he thought it was, he sat down and played the voicemail.

“I do hope you’re off doing something interesting and/or unsavory,” came Ezra’s surprisingly jovial voice. “I had hoped to catch up with you sooner, but things have conspired here. Please note this number, as I’ve had to abandon my previous one. I’ll talk to you later.”

Kevin snorted at the brief, disjointed message. _Asshole._

He added the number to Ezra’s contact in his phone and called it, standing a little unsteadily and making his way back to the coffeemaker, which was ready to serve him now.

“Interesting, or unsavory?” Ezra greeted him. He was in a disgustingly good mood.

“Why didn’t you tell me you got shot?” Kevin countered, not willing to be put off anymore. He’d kept silent and away and out of it for almost two weeks now and damn it, he wanted answers. “Shot in the _back_ , Ezra. I didn’t need to know?”

“Not at that time, no,” his cousin replied evenly. “You were otherwise engaged and I saw no need to bother you with it.”

“Uh huh,” Kevin grumbled, knowing he’d never win this argument with the over-protective agent. True, he’d been kind of screwed up after Staten Island, but still… “What about Internal Affairs? _They_ sure as hell bothered me.”

“They…?” Ezra was silent a long moment before he blew out an audible breath over the phone. “I was assured they believed you to be unrelated to their investigation.”

Kevin relented in the face of Ezra’s obvious anger. “Yeah, well, they were mostly fishing, and since _I_ didn’t know anything…” He took a breath himself, and let go of the bitterness. “What the hell happened, Ezra?” he asked softly.

Ezra sighed. “A long and sordid tale, Young Mister Ryan. It seems one of our operatives here saw fit to avail himself of some of Mick Hanlon’s money. I was simply a convenient scapegoat.”

There was clearly _so_ much more to it than that. “So, what? Are you in hiding now? Changing your phone—”

“You read too many novels, Kevin,” Ezra laughed. “I have been cleared of all suspicion. I simply object to having my privacy violated in my own home. I saw no need to keep a phone the Bureau had already had their hands in, even if the investigation has come to a successful conclusion.”

“They caught the guy,” Kevin replied, sipping his coffee with a calmer heart.

“Yes.” Ezra’s voice went mockingly curious. “It appears he left quite a paper trail. Once they tracked the money, they found that this isn’t the first time he’s drunk from the forbidden cup.” He sighed breezily. “I expect he just got cocky after a while.”

Kevin grinned, wondering which of Ezra’s friends from the old days he’d pressed into service to find the money. “Just bad luck he picked your bust, then, huh?”

Ezra’s smirk was audible. “Bad luck, indeed.” The smirk faded. “For everyone involved, it seems.”

“Yeah,” Kevin broke in. “Speaking of… How are you doing? Is there, you know, permanent damage, or…?” He wasn’t sure how to ask. He’d never actually known anyone who’d been shot before. Well, anyone who’d been shot and lived, anyway.

“I’ll be fine,” Ezra assured him, though the shadow in his voice showed the lie. “It’s hardly an experience I’d wish on anyone, however. You might consider another line of work before you get too far along.”

Kevin chuckled. “Um, it might be too late for that.”

“Oh really?” Ezra said, asking without actually asking.

“You’re going to have to change the nickname. It’s Young _Detective_ Ryan, now,” Kevin announced, still tickled as hell by the sound of it.

“A delightful name, and one fitting an investigator such as yourself,” Ezra crowed proudly. “And where, pray tell, are they going to station you? Major Crimes? Corporate?” Kevin could almost hear his eyebrows waggle. “Vice?”

He leaned against the countertop. This was what he was dreading thinking about. “Bricker wants me to stay in Narco.”

“Understandable,” Ezra replied, tone even and open. “You’ve shown yourself to have quite the knack for that area of investigation.”

“He also said I should look at all the openings I can. Maybe there’s somewhere better suited to me.”

“Good advice.”

Kevin frowned. “You’re not helping, you know?” He sipped his coffee and considered. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t make any hasty decisions while standing hungover in your kitchen, yes?” Ezra teased. His voice got an edge to it—the same edge he’d gotten with Gwen when she was fifteen and tried smoking for the first time. “I do hope you’re not making a habit of this.”

Kevin could have been offended, but he wasn’t. “First of all, how do you know that? And second, we had a party at O’Malley’s for my promotion last night. It’s not my fault that the two times you’ve called in the last two months were the day after the night before.”

Ezra continued on as if Kevin hadn’t spoken a word, though the scolding tone evaporated. “Because a detective in the New York City Police force should really keep himself to a higher standard, you know?”

“And FBI agents shouldn’t line their own pockets with drug money,” Kevin shot back cheerily. He looked over at the cable box to see that it was almost one o’clock. “I need to go. Mom’s expecting me for a celebration at the house at four.” He remembered thinking about Ezra, all alone there in Atlanta. “You should come visit,” he said. “I bet you racked up a ton of vacation time during that operation, huh?”

Ezra’s voice was even and almost normal, but Kevin knew something else was going on with him. “Alas, I shall have to continue accruing it. Duty calls, and all that.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll see if I can come up sometime, though. I do miss Aunt Lil’s cooking.”

“So do I,” Kevin moaned. “I’m going to have to learn to cook something other than ramen, one of these days.”

“Well not today, Detective,” Ezra told him firmly. “I look forward to finding out what you decide regarding your soon-to-be storied career.”

“You and me both,” Kevin snorted. His headache was easing off already, the sun was shining, Ezra was an asshole who wouldn’t tell him anything. But he was okay and that was what really mattered… “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I always do, my dear cousin,” Ezra said in that breezy way that meant he didn’t really believe his own words. Before Kevin could call him on it, Ezra had disconnected the call.

“Uh huh,” Kevin grumbled. He still wondered what the hell had gone on down there. He knew his cousin well enough to know he’d never find out, though.

The phone buzzed in his hand and he looked down to see his mom’s number. “Hey, Mom,” he answered brightly. “Did you call everyone in your phone, or what?” He smiled as she sputtered out an excuse.

It was going to be a good day.

**********  
the end


End file.
